I’ve been working since May on two apps I’m hoping to publish. One of them is more or less ready to submit. However, I seem to have an issue with my developer account, which was recently migrated from an individual to an organization account. The organization is an LLC of which I am the sole member.
When I learned I could create an LLC that checked all the boxes outlined here for enrolling as an organization, I decided I liked the idea of setting it up this way, so I formed an LLC, got my DUNS number, and created a website.
At this point, all the boxes were checked, so I made the migration request to Apple. It was approved after I spoke to an Apple representative. The only business that remained was for me to submit banking and tax info for the agreements.
I wasn’t sure if Apple would require me to get a business bank account, but I was willing to do so if necessary. As it turned out, the system accepted my submission of the same banking info (personal checking account).
The tax agreement required a completed W-9. This is where I ran into trouble. For a single-member LLC, where the legal entity is a “disregarded entity,” the social security number is used for the tax identification number, and the individual’s name is entered on line 1. This is clearly stated in the IRS instructions. The trouble was that line 1 was pre-populated and uneditable with the organization name filled in, and I was not able to enter my social security number as my tax id.
I communicated this to Apple in a message, after which I received an e-mail directing me to fill out a W-9 downloaded from the IRS website and e-mail it to vendortax@apple.com, which I did. That was a few days ago. Today I got an e-mail which stated:
“We believe we have resolved the issue of duplicate tax for you. Please allow 1-2 business days for the system to refresh, then log in to iTunes Connect, and attempt to complete the Tax Information section again.”
I had started to have some concern initially when the tax form gave me issues, so I looked back at the checklist and noticed in the very first paragraph, it says to enroll as an individual if you are an “individual or sole proprietor/single person business.” The “single person business” part made me wonder if I was never even supposed to be able to migrate my account in the first place, so I went to the internet to look for verification that a single-member LLC can enroll as an organization. I did find this one Twitter post where a person stated they can, but nothing more.
If you’re still with me, I apologize for the long, rambling post. I’m just looking to see if anyone has experience with or knowledge in this area. I thought it a good idea to check here before going to Apple, which I will do if the issue isn’t resolvable as explained in their e-mail in a day or two.
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